Urban Morphology: Buildings, Streets, and the People In Between

06/17/24 • 38 min

This month, our host Alysha Helmrich and her guest Lynn Abdouni are coming to you live from halfway across the world.
This pair of UGA engineering professors recently visited Doha, Qatar for a meeting about the Proactive Resilience Plan (PReP), a collaboration between UGA, Texas A&M, and the Qatar Foundation. During their trip, they took a moment to chat about urban morphology: "the study of the buildings, the streets, and the spaces in between them."
"We're talking about the urban fabric- it's alive," Dr. Abdouni said. "The streets are for walking, but they're also for meandering to shop, for having impromptu conversations, for chasing after pigeons- whatever you want to do, it's for multiple uses."
Abdouni's interest in this topic started early. She grew up in a semi-rural area of a postwar Lebanon, and noticing where features like sidewalks were (or weren't) placed inspired her to connect to places through urban design. By designing public spaces with humans in mind, we can foster personal connections to place and more flexible, long-lasting cities.
"I'm obsessed with anything mundane and boring- gas stations, take me there; parking lots, I love them- anything boring," she said. "You take some of these mundane places where we spend a lot of time, and you start thinking about them as, 'what else could this be?'"
Listen now to hear all the thoughts, feelings, and even some controversial takes on urban design, such as the correct parking-spots-per-bowling-lane ratio and why the San Antonio Riverwalk is the best riverwalk.
Lynn's Haiku (co-authored by Alysha):
Flex the space, anew
Human is the center, now:
Past, future, combined.
Lynn's other poem, "Urban Morphology: A Checklist":
Urban morphology, a checklist:
Flex,
humanize,
imagine.
Links:
Dr. Lynn Abdouni: https://engineering.uga.edu/team_member/lynn-abdouni/
Dr. Abdouni's new publication, "Bridging the Gap: Morphological Mapping of the Beqaa’s Vernacular Built Environment": https://cpcl.unibo.it/article/view/16887/17779
Read more about the Proactive Resilience Plan (PReP): https://research.uga.edu/research-insights/proactive-resilience-plan-prep-an-integrated-framework-applied-to-critical-economic-sectors-bjorn-birgisson/

Previous Episode

Implementing Change: Progress on Climate Resilience in Atlanta, Georgia

This month, we're welcoming practitioners from Atlanta Regional Commission: Katherine Zitsch, Deputy COO, and Jon Philipsborn, Climate and Resilience Manager.
Regional commissions work on many subject areas across a metropolitan area, from community development and transportation to water security and climate change. At ARC, resilience is a key defining factor in how they make decisions around all of these topics and more. In this episode, hosts Alysha and Todd and their guests discuss how ARC is helping Atlanta tackle big development questions, challenges and opportunities.
The group also tackles larger questions like the role of government, specifically local governments, in engineering and environmental decisions, as well as specific projects ARC is working on to solve problems and build relationships across Atlanta.
"What's interesting about resilience is that everybody comes at it differently. Every city is in a different space, and every county is in a different space, and what we're trying to do at ARC is leverage the ones that are ahead towards helping the ones that are interested, but haven't had the space to get there yet."
Both guests also responded to our usual request for a haiku about their episode's subject matter, despite some debate about syllables...
Katherine's poem:
Atlanta's future
Knitting our resilience
Bridges to new paths
Jon's poem:
Disasters happen
Our choices influence the impact
Future is open
Learn more about Atlanta Regional Commission here.

Next Episode

UGA's Resilient Future: Creating Space for Nature-based Solutions

Introducing Dr. Brian Bledsoe, Director of the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Georgia and farmer, guitar player, and dad (not in that order.)
Our hosts Alysha Helmrich and Todd Bridges join Bledsoe in reviewing his lifelong commitment to research and interdisciplinary collaboration. His career has largely focused on river management and hydrology, leading him to work not just with engineers but ecologists, economists, geologists, lawyers and more. When he proposed a new institute at UGA focusing on natural solutions for infrastructure problems, he found a large community of interest that confirmed just how critical interdisciplinary expertise was for resilience.
Bledsoe described the "tremendous potential" nature-based solutions have to change how we approach development. His own mission in the movement is "to act as a connector of people who are committed to rethinking infrastructure." IRIS itself is meant to adapt to needs of the researchers, stakeholders and students that comprise it, but Bledsoe hopes that the institute can act as a lighthouse for natural infrastructure solutions.
He explains how IRIS is promoting this work for their large community of students and partners, and calls on practitioners of the IRIS mission to be "relentless listeners," sharing knowledge while learning from others. Listen now to learn more about IRIS's ongoing work on nature-based solutions!
Brian's poems:
When in doubt,
Don’t just build it stout-
Spread it out!
Bend, don’t break
Hard and strong will fail
Green sapling.
Dr. Brian Bledsoe, UGA IRIS: https://iris.uga.edu/iris-people/brian-bledsoe-p-e/
Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems: https://iris.uga.edu/
IRIS's new Natural Infrastructure Certificate: https://iris.uga.edu/natural-infrastructure-certificate/
ASCE's statement on NbS: https://www.asce.org/advocacy/policy-statements/ps575---nature-based-solutions
IRIS's NbS Job Board: https://iris.uga.edu/the-iris-job-board/
Check out this past episode that also discusses interdisciplinary resilience:
https://iris.uga.edu/2023/11/15/resilient-futures-podcast-episode-2-promoting-resilience-interdisciplinary-expertise-and-collaboration/